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i. e. Chaucer, a name frequently given him by Spenser. See Shep. Cal. Ec. 2, 6, 12, and elsewhere.

i. e. Spenser, which name he gives himself throughout his works.

The two first stanzas of this speech, as they relate to Pastoral, are written in the measure which Spenser uses in the first eclogue of the Shepherd's Calendar: the rest, where he speaks of fable, are in the stanza of the Faery Queen.

i. e. Milton. Lycidas and the Epitaphium Damonis are the only Pastorals we have of Milton's; in the latter of which, where he laments Car. Deodatus under the name of Damon, he calls himself Thyrsis.

Mr. Pope died in the year 1744; this Poem was then written, and published first in the year 1747.

According to a fragment of Afranius, who makes Experience and Memory the parents of Wisdom.

This passage is preserved by Aulus Gellius, lib. xiii. cap. 8.

This Ode was written in the year 1747, and published in the first volume of Mr. Dodsley's Miscellany. It is here revised throughout, and concluded according to the Author's original idea.

A seat near ------ finely situated, with a great command of water; but disposed in a very false taste.

It was by the advice of Dr. Powell, the author's tutor at St. John's College, that Musæus was published. This Ode was for the first time printed from a corrected copy 1797.

Alluding to the ΣΨΜΠΟΣΙΑ, particularly Zenophon's respecting the moral songs of the Greeks. —See Dr. Hurd's note on the 219th verse of Horace's Art of Poetry, Vol. i. p. 173, 4th edit.

This was also for the first time printed 1797. In the interval between the dates of the preceding Ode and of this, the author had been unexpectedly nominated by the Fellows of Pembroke Hall to a vacant Fellowship. See Memoirs of Mr. Gray, vol. iii, p. 70, edit. 1778.

This Ode was written at the request of the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, set to music by the late Dr. Boyce, and performed in the Senate-House at Cambridge, July 1st, 1749, at the Installation of his Grace Thomas Hollis, Duke of Newcastle, Chancellor of the University; it has since appeared in some Miscellaneous Collections of Poetry, and was therefore inserted 1797.

Andrew Marvell, born at Kingston upon Hull in the year 1620.

See The Rehearsal transprosed, and an account of the effect of that satire, in the Biographia Britannica, art. Marvell.

1st Antistrophe, The whole earth is at rest, &c. ver. 7, 8.

1st Epode, Hell from beneath is moved for thee, &c. ver. 9, 10, 11.

2d Strophe, How art thou fallen from Heaven, &c. ver. 12, 13, 14.

2d Antistrophe, Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, &c. ver. 15, 16.

2d Epode, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, &c. ver. 16, 17, 18, 19.

3d Strophe, Thou shalt not be joined to them in burial, &c. ver. 20.

3d Antistrophe, Prepare slaughter for his children, ver. 21, 22.

3d Epode, Saith the Lord, I will also make it a possession for the bittern, &c. ver. 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

This Ode is a free paraphrase of part of the 14th chapter of Isaiah, where the Prophet, after he has foretold the destruction of Babylon, subjoins a Song of Triumph, which, he supposes, the Jews will sing when his prediction is fulfilled. And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shall take up this proverb against the King of Babylon, and say, “How hath the oppressor ceased,” &c.

1st Strophe, ver. 4, 5, 6.

This instrument was first invented by Kircher about the year 1649. See his Musurgia Universalis, sive ars consoni et dissoni, lib. ix. After having been neglected above a hundred years, it was again accidentally discovered by Mr. Oswald.

When the dramatic poem of Caractacus was altered for theatrical representation in 1776, this dirge was added to be sung over the body of Arviragus. Being of the lyrical cast, the author found himself inclined to preserve it in the series of his Odes, published in 1797.

Printed for the first time 1797.

Alluding to the well-known allegory of Sin and Death, in the second Book of Paradise Lost.

Written immediately after the trial of Admiral Keppel, and then printed.

Printed 1797, from an enlarged and corrected copy.

This marks the time when this Ode was written, viz. towards the conclusion of the American War.

Printed separately in May, 1782.

This expression is taken from Milton's song on May Morning, to which this stanza in general alludes, and the 4th verse in the next.

The Poem of Caractacus was read in MS. by the late Earl of Chatham, who honoured it with an approbation which the Author is here proud to record.

See Ode to the Naval Officers of Great Britain, written 1779.

See the Motto from Pindar.

In allusion to a fine and well-known passage in Milton's Lycidas.

The concluding line in this Ode, when first printed, ran thus:

But when it was recollected, that very soon after its publication, a person, too well known in the political world, usurped the name of friend of the people, for no better reason than that of promoting his own success in an election contest at Westminster, it will not be wondered at, that the Author should now choose to alter that conclusion.

This he has done, not only on moral and prudential, but, he trusts, also on constitutional principles; as he firmly believes, that no Englishman will now (he writes at the conclusion of the year 1795) honour that person with such an appellation, except the very few, who think the people of England and an English mob, synonymous terms.

First published on the day of its date.

Independency, see Ode, p. 38.

See English Garden, Book IV. v. 685, &c.

There were in the prisons of Paris alone, when this was written, above 6000 prisoners.

Cui meliore Luto finxit præcordia Titan. So Milton in his 12th Sonnet, speaking of liberty, says, “But who loves that, must first be wise and good.”

Mr. Pope uses this Platonic phrase for conscience. —See Essay on Man, Ep. II. p. 204, with Warburton's note upon it, where the learned critic says justly that it admits a double meaning. —It is in its latter practical, or rather Christian sense, that I here employ it, to convey the important truth delivered by St. Paul, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Written in March, 1794, and first printed 1797.

First antistrophe, ver. 7. There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen, &c. But where shall wisdom be found, &c. to verse 14.

First epode, ver. 14. And the sea saith it is not in me. Ver. 21. It is kept close from the fowls of the air. Note, this is the only slight transposition of the text.

Second strophe, ver. 15. It cannot be gotten for gold, &c. to ver. 24.

Second antistrophe, from ver. 24 to 28. But here the version of Albert Schultens is rather followed, than that of our Bible.

Second epode, ver. 28. And unto man he said, Behold, to fear the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.

The whole 28th chapter of the book of Job, when separated from the context, is a poetical illustration of this truth, “that man is capable of making great advances in the discovery of nature, but as to prying into the secrets of Providence in the government of the world, which is here emphatically called the Wisdom of God, that is above the reach of all creatures.” The first strophe, in the above metrical version, begins at the first verse: “Surely there is a vein for silver and a place for gold;” and proceeds to the 7th.

Alluding to this couplet of Mr. Pope's,

Horace.

He died March 6th, 1754. This Poem was presented to her soon after. At the very beginning of that month the Lady had been with a select party at a small villa in Chiswick, then rented by the Earl of Holdernesse. The Author was, at the time, advised by several of his friends, to publish it; but an Ode, written by Mr. Garrick on the same subject (see Dodsley's Miscellany, Vol. IV. page 198,) had got the start of him. He therefore retained it in manuscript, being by this time sufficiently apprized, that a poem, whose merit rested chiefly on picturesque imagery, and what is termed pure (or mere) poetry, was not calculated to vie, in point of popularity, with what was written in a plainer and less figurative mode, and conveyed in a more familiar style and stanza. First published 1797.

Musæus, the first poem in this collection, written while the Author was a scholar of St. John's College in Cambridge. See page 15.

See the description of the Genius of the Wood, in Milton's Arcades.

This Elegy was prefixed to the former editions of Caractacus, as dedicatory of that poem.

Ovid. Trist. Lib. V. El. vii. 23.

Verbatim from a letter of Hooker's to Archbishop Whitgift. “But, my Lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun,” [viz. his immortal Treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity] “unless I be removed into some quiet country parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread in peace and privacy.” See his Life in the Biographia Britannica.

In a book of French verses, entitled Oeuvres du Philosophe de sans Souci, and lately reprinted at Berlin, by authority, under the title of Poesies Diverses, may be found an epistle to Marshal Keith, written professedly against the immortality of the soul. By way of specimen of the whole, take the following lines:

It is to this epistle, that the rest of the Elegy alludes.

A custom is prevalent with the peasants in that part of the country, of planting field flowers and sweet herbs on the graves of their relations and friends; a pleasing specimen of this which the Author saw when he was paying a visit to Lord Vernon at Breton Ferry, Glamorganshire, in the summer of the year 1787, occasioned him to write this Elegy, first published 1797.

This epithet is used to call to the reader's recollection a passage in Shakspeare, descriptive of a character to which in its best parts Mr. Gray's was not dissimilar.

Although I run the risk of some imputed vanity, I am induced to add here, the opinion of a too partial friend concerning the foregoing Poem; but shall only extract from the written paper which he gave me, the part that points out the specific differences which occurred to him, when he compared it with another of a very similar title. And this I do merely to obviate a prejudice which some readers might take to it, as supposing from the title and subject that I wrote it to emulate what, I am as ready to own as they are, is inimitable. “Your Elegy, (says this Gentleman) as it relates to a particular and local custom in South Wales, must of course little resemble Mr. Gray's, which is purely of a general kind. He laments the departed peasants; you compassionate those that lament them: he places their former occupations in an honourable light; you view, in an amiable one, the weakness of their surviving friends: in the former Elegy, we find the dead considered with respect to what their possible situation while living might have been, with all the advantages of knowledge; in the latter the living are endeavoured to be consoled for the want of it. In the general church-yard of the one, contemplation is more widely-extended; in the other particular one, concern is more nearly impressed. His verses inspire a solemnity which awes and arrests the mind; your's breathe a tenderness which softens and attracts the heart: there are stanzas in Gray's Elegy of what, I venture to call, sublime melancholy; in your's of extreme sensibility.—It is a curious circumstance that the writer of the former should be introduced into both these Elegies, but certainly, as reality is superior to fiction, in a more pathetic manner in the latter. The locality of your scene enabled you to open with a picturesque description, which, besides contrasting strongly with the place of interment, is copied from nature, and animated with expression.”—I will add, that it was not so much for the sake of this kind of contrast that I gave the Elegy such an exordium, as to make it appear a day scene, and as such to contrast it with the twilight scene of my excellent Friend's Elegy.

Written in the year 1748, and first printed in 1797.

Written in London, 1752, and first printed 1797.

John Bagnal, Esq. then a student in the Temple.

Ovid Trist. Lib. III. Eleg. IV. p. 42.

See the conclusion of the 3d Elegy, p. 104 of this Volume.

He was then Preceptor to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York.

See Plinii Nat. Hist. Lib. XXXV. Cap. 15, the pigments he enumerates were black, white, yellow, and red, as appears from the following passage, “Quatuor coloribus solis immortalia opera illa fecere; ex albis, Melino; ex silaceis, Attico; ex rubris, Sinopide Pontica; ex nigris, Atramento:” Apelles, Echion, Melanthius, Nicomachus, Clarissimi Pictores; quum tabulæ eorum singulæ oppidorum venirent opibus.

The authority of my late excellent friend Sir Joshua Reynolds fully supports the latter piece of advice, who in his second Discourse to the Pupils of the Royal Academy (see page 54, 8 vo. edition) says, “What therefore I wish to impress upon you is this, that whenever an opportunity offers you may paint your studies instead of drawing them. This will give you such a facility in using colours, that they will arrange themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand that conducts it. If one art excluded the other, this advice could not, with any propriety, be given; but if painting comprises both drawing and colouring, and if by a short struggle of resolute industry the same expedition is attainable in painting, as in drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to the practice, or why that should be done in parts, which may be done altogether.”

Let me add from myself, that I suspect the use of a multiplicity of pigments, and the prohibition of the pencil (hereafter to be the artist's principal instrument) till the port-crayon has been first long and sedulously employed, have frequently been great impediments to the progress of young artists, especially of those who are endowed by nature with an inventive faculty.

First published 1797.

See Psalm xc. ver. 10.

First published 1797.

First published 1797.

Now first printed.

First published 1797.

This epithet is rather hazarded, but if they be not Pastori d'Arcadi, they ought to be so, for they are most certainly Arcades ambo.

Had Dr. Johnson heard this word used, he would certainly have said, “Sir, the term is cacophonous.”

First published 1797.

A phrase that Milton uses to express simplex munditiis. See his translation of Hor. Ode V. Lib. I. Mr. T. Warton, in his edition of Milton's Poems, criticises the expression. It is however Milton's, and, if it does not fully express Horace's meaning, seems to serve my purpose perfectly.

See Mr. Price's Description of a Picturesque Lane.

First published 1797.

What Mr. Gray thought and writ (see his Detached Thoughts, printed in his Memoirs, Vol. III. p. 113, last edition) gives complete authority to this Prosopopæia.

“The doctrine of Epicurus is ever ruinous to society. It had its rise when Greece was declining, and, perhaps, hastened its dissolution, as also that of Rome. It is now propagated in France and in England, and seems likely to produce the same effects in both.” May heaven avert, at least, the latter part of this presentiment formed above forty years ago!

This inscription alludes to the design of the sculpture, which is a figure of Health, with her ancient insignia, in alto relievo, dropping a chaplet on the side of a monumental urn.

The cenotaph is placed immediately under that of Milton, and represents, in alto relievo, a female figure with a lyre, as emblematical of the higher kinds of poetry, pointing with one hand to the bust above, and supporting with the other a medallion, on which is a profile head inscribed, “Thomas Gray.” On the plinth is the following date; “He died July 31, 1771.”

The sculpture was executed by that eminent artist Mr. Bacon, in Newman-street, at the joint expense of Dr. James Browne, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge; Richard Stonhewer, Esq. Auditor of Excise; and the Author.

This and the foregoing Epitaph, with some others, come under that stricture, which Dr. Johnson has imposed on several of Mr. Pope's. The Author knows, but despises it. Personal appellatives in Greek appear gracefully in the Anthologia. In English poetry they almost constantly induce an air of vulgarity. That species of criticism, therefore, which either in the verse or prose of any language militates against what Horace calls its jus et norma loquendi, he holds to be futile. Besides this, when, on a monumental tablet, a prose inscription precedes (as is ever the modern mode) the verses, why should these be loaded with any unnecessary repetition?

Her works, deservedly admired, are now in the possession of J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. at Rokeby Park, Yorkshire.

Alluding to an expression of his in his Charge to the Poets, which excited the rancour of Churchill, Lloyd, &c. See Memoirs of his Life, page 108.

When Lauder first produced his forgery respecting Milton, Dr. Johnson ushered it into the world by a preface, and afterwards writ Lauder's recantation. Some of his numerous biographers have endeavoured to prove the Doctor no party concerned; however this be, the virulence he afterwards shewed to Milton in the Life which he writ of him for the booksellers, leads fairly to support my assertion, that he would have defended Lauder, had he been in any sort defensible.

The translator of Fingal, Temora, &c.

The discoverer and transcriber of Rowley's Poems.

The phrase at the time was pinning a lady's tail; but the young Author was then too delicate to use it: and happy it was he did not; for the present nicer age would have thought him as indelicate as Lord Monboddo. However an excellent anecdote related of Mrs. Russel, bedchamber-woman to the late Princess Amelia, which is by many remembered (though not here related) will vindicate the authenticity of what was then the usual phrase to express the adjustment of a most material part of a lady's dress.

What a strange objection is here put into the lady's mouth! she finds fault with the women in Charles the First's time for having only half a waist; when every body knows, that to have no waist at all is the true criterion of female elegance. As to lacing, who now could imitate the Venus de Medicis, or any other fine antique, that admitted so gothic a ligament.

Part of the prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, so far at least as starched ruffs go, though the male (I rather call them so than the masculine) followers of Fashion have found a mode of adding to the size of their own necks not quite so picturesque; and the ladies have, occasionally in their morning dishabilles, condescended to imitate them. As to flounces, they have extended their dominion even to bed curtains and hangings of rooms: this, I suppose, out of charity to the insect tribe, for whom they afford a general and most convenient nidus.

This bold assertion, I take for granted, was made merely on hear-say evidence. Readers at the present time will be best able to judge whether that evidence was founded on truth.

A celebrated opera dancer then in vogue.

I suspect that the young Author now, and before in this epistle, took his idea of female shape and beauty from Fielding's Description of Fanny in his Adventures of Joseph Andrews; an idea, which, compared with what it is now, was in that author as absurd, as in himself.

Though I do not find it on the margin of the original MS. the Author had an eye to Virgil in the peculiar changes the mock lover employs:

Georg. Lib. IV. ver. 440.

This is the second time we meet with this obsolete word, yet it will serve with many others in the Poem to ascertain its exact chronology.

Spleen—another obsolete word. Nerves however obtains still most vehemently, though, perhaps, it may in time give place to spasms, whatever the author of Zoonomia may say of their non-existence.

Here the boy pedant comes again from his Virgil with

—Æn. Lib. I. v. 20.

Whale-bone and brocade equally exploded articles.

This very juvenile imitation of the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton, and that which follows it, were written some time previous to that of the Lycidas. (See Poem I. of this Volume.) A copy of the above was many years ago surreptitiously printed in a magazine, and afterwards inserted in Pearch's Miscellany. On this account, I thought it right to revise and now publish it (1797.) The counterpart to it was, with my assent, first printed in the Cambridge Verses on the Peace of Aix la Chappelle; and stands here as it did formerly.

So called from Olenas, a city in Peloponesus, where, according to Ovid, this flower first grew. The story is told by him in his Fasti. Lib. V. v. 231.